Research: Evolution of Twitter Users and Behavior

The microblogging site Twitter is now one of the most popular Web destinations. Due to the relative ease of data access, there has been significant research based on Twitter data, ranging from measuring the spread of ideas through society to predicting the behavior of real world phenomena such as the stock market.

Unfortunately, relatively little work has studied the changes in the Twitter ecosystem itself; most research that uses Twitter data is typically based on a small time-window of data, generally ranging from a few weeks to a few months. Twitter is known to have evolved significantly since its founding, and it remains unclear whether prior results still hold, and whether the (often implicit) assumptions of proposed systems are still valid.

This Research is a first step towards answering these question by focusing on the evolution of Twitter’s users and their behavior. Using a set of over 37 billion tweets spanning over seven years, research quantify how the users, their behavior, and the site as a whole have evolved.

The Research observe and quantify a number of trends including the spread of Twitter across the globe, the rise of spam and malicious behavior, the rapid adoption of tweeting conventions, and the shift from desktop to mobile usage. The results can be used to interpret and calibrate previous Twitter work, as well as to make future projections of the site as a whole.

Research:The Tweets They are a-Changin’: Evolution of Twitter Users and Behavior

Ali is a seasoned business leader and executive with 10 years of diverse experience in Digital and Commercial areas of IT industry. He gained broad experience in managing on-demand (cloud) and on-premise offerings in both Public and Private sectors in Turkey and UK&I.